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Earth Day

April 22 is the day when more than 180 nations celebrate Earth Day. Earth Day is the world's most widely observed secular holiday. It is supported by the international Earth Day Network and characterized by activities focused on environmental issues.

History

Earth Day was founded by Gaylord Nelson on April 22, 1970, turning April 22 into a national day of observance of environmental problems. According to the founding father himself, a U.S. senator at the time of establishment, the idea for Earth Day started with the realization that the state of the natural environment was not an issue in the politics of the United States.

This was the case despite the growing concern of U.S. citizens in the 1960s, which was stimulated in part by the 1962 publication Silent Spring, an influential book by U.S. marine biologist Rachel Carson (1907–64) about the use of chemical pesticides and their influence on health and the environment. The book raised awareness of the dangers of chemicals, led to the formation of environmental protection movements in many European countries, and put environmental issues on the U.S. political agenda.

Nelson managed to persuade U.S. President John F. Kennedy to give visibility to this issue by going on a five-day, 11-state conservation tour in September 1963. The tour became the germ of the idea that ultimately flowered into Earth Day. In 1970, a grassroots protest was organized by Denis Hayes, who was a professor of engineering at Stanford, the director of a national laboratory (SERI), and president of the Bullitt Foundation—an environmental foundation in Seattle. He was an environmental activist and proponent of alternative energy. This demonstration of popular protest tapped into the environmental concerns of the general public and infused the student anti–Vietnam War energy into the environmental cause. The demonstration of approximately 20 million people, many of whom were students from over 2,000 colleges and universities and about 10,000 primary and secondary schools, as well as other citizens, established a forum to express their concern with the environment.

Effects and Programs

Earth Day has been gaining in international popularity since the last decade of the 20th century. The Earth Day Network (EDN) was founded on the premise that all people have a moral right to a healthy, sustainable environment. The Earth Day Network's mission is to broaden and diversify the environmental movement worldwide and to mobilize it as the most effective vehicle for promoting a healthy, sustainable environment. The EDN provides a combination of education, public policy, and activism campaigns and has, as of May 2010, more than 20,000 partners and organizations in 190 countries. The EDN coordinates more than 1 billion people who participate in the Earth Day activities, making it the largest secular civic event in the world. EDN's programs and activities are guided by goals including promoting civic engagement, broadening the meaning of “environment,” mobilizing communities, implementing groundbreaking environmental education programs, and inspiring college students to become environmental leaders.

EDN's Environmental Education Program is one of the most successful in the United States, providing tools to educators and students for integrating environmental issues into core curriculum across disciplines and grade levels, in and out of the classroom. This program is also becoming increasingly known in Europe. In her book The Morning After Earth Day, Mary Graham described the sociopolitical effects of Earth Day on the international community in general and U.S. society in particular. The great increase in political efforts to address environmental problems following the establishment of Earth Day was unprecedented in the history of the U.S. (and, partially, European) environmental movement. Earth Day has also raised questions about settled habits, having to do with existing technology, dependency on energy and transportation, and the role that different political and social stakeholders play in environmental degradation. Despite its international success, Earth Day is less known in developing countries.

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